A maltster on Gotland

While on holiday on Gotland I saw a note on a poster about an open
farm and something about malt being made. There was a phone number, so
I decided to call. Yes, the voice at the other end said, he made
malts, but not the traditional way. His neighbour did, however. Sure,
I could come visit, and if his neighbour was home we could see his
malt house.

I drive up in front of the house and stop. No sign of life. I walk
up to the front door and ring the doorbell. The door opens
immediately, and I'm invited into the kitchen, where Staffan is eating
strawberries with milk. I join him, as we chat about malting and
brewing. Then, the moment I'm finished, he jumps up, clears away the
bowls, and off we go.

He starts off by showing me his hop garden, which he's just
planted. Then we go into his brewery in the barn. It looks very
modern, with steel tanks, electronics, and plastic fermenters. "You
want a sip," Staffan asks. Sure, why not. It's a clearish, amber
beer. The taste is bone dry, powerfully citric and resiny, quite
fizzy. Very craft, not even remotely farmhouse.

Hop garden

So I ask him a bit about his brewing. It turns out he distinguishes
between "beer" (modern beer) and "dricke" (gotlandsdricke), and he
brews beer. The reason is he just doesn't like gotlandsdricke. He
doesn't say, but having encountered this before my guess is he's one
of those people who loathe sweetness, which is obviously going to be a
showstopper. Plus, he says, he doesn't like the smoke flavour.

He asks if I want to see his malt making. "Sure," I say. We go into
the next room, dominated by a big yellow vat with some complicated
machinery on top. Looking at it I quickly realize this is a malting
machine. A pipe leads hot air in underneath the vat, and there are
Archimedes screws for turning the malts. The screws sit on a metal
beam that rotates around the side of the vat.

The malt machine

"Where did you buy this? It must have been really expensive," I
say.
"I didn't buy it. I made it."
"You made it?"
"Yes. This is the fourth machine."
"What do you mean, the fourth? Where are the other three?"
"This is the fourth attempt. It took this many tries to get it
really good."
"You mean you invented the whole thing?" I'm getting
pretty incredulous at this point.
"Yes. I had some help from a smith and an electrician, though."

It turns out that when Staffan gave up on being a pig farmer
someone asked him if he could make malts for a local whisky
distillery. He decided to try, but the malts didn't come out well.
So he studied all the literature he could find, and started making
these machines.

He must be reading the amazement in my face, because he says
defensively that "I was a pig farmer for 30 years, so I've been
tinkering with screws and that kind of thing all my life." And
thinking about it I can see what he means. I've met a few farmers now,
and they're all extremely practical people, forever tinkering with
machines and constructing all kinds of things. So yes. But I'm still
impressed.

Archimedes screws

There are people in both Denmark and Norway trying to start
producing malts, and while some have succeeded they've all found it
pretty hard. And yet this guy hasn't just succeeded in making malts,
he's even invented a malting machine!

I ask him to explain how it works. It turns out that he steeps the
grains in the machine, running off and replacing the water at
intervals. Then he does the germination, also in the machine, using
the screws to keep the sprouting even and prevent the malt from
caking. Finally, he dries it in the machine. He burns peat or wood
pellets for the drying, depending on whether he's producing smoked
malts or not.

"This way, I don't have to move the malts at all," Staffan says,
clearly pleased. Indeed. His design is obviously derived from the
Saladin box,
but that's only used for germination. With this thing Staffan has
extended the machine to cover the entire malting process, doing away
with lots of heavy manual work. You add grain to the machine, and
later you take out malts. Done.

Heater for the malt machine

The machine has a capacity of 2 tons a week. He doesn't say, but I
assume that since it's so highly automated that probably means he
could produce some 40-50 batches a year, all by himself. He grows the
barley himself, and says the variety is Tippla. The malts are dried at
60C, so it's a pale malt.

He explains that he's actually sold the machine to several other
producers on the mainland. He wanted to just send them some drawings
"and they could build it themselves, but they didn't want to." Well,
no surprise there. Not everyone thinks building a machine this size is
something you just do. So eventually Staffan built the machines for
them.

As we leave the barn he explains that he's thinking of beginning to
sell beer commercially in local inns. I ask him if he's going to sell
gotlandsdricke. "You can't sell that," he says. I never manage to get
an explanation of why not, but I see from Untappd that he's now
selling his beer at Kapten
Grogg, at least.

The brewery

I ask a bit about his traditionally malting neighbour, but he turns
out not to be home, so we can't see the malt house. The neighbour
makes traditional malts and beer, and he also sells traditional malts
to other brewers. The malts are smoked with birch wood.

I ask Staffan if his neighbour boils the wort. "Of course he boils
the wort! It won't become beer otherwise," he barks. I tell him
that Anders, a 10-minute drive away, doesn't
boil the wort at all, and he just looks at me expressionlessly. I
decide not to push the point.

Any chance you have an email address for the guy or a copy of his plans for the machine? Would be fasinating to try to build a version.

Courtlyn - 2017-05-05 21:38:14

Same question as Eike. Any chance you still have contact info for Staffan. I would love to take a look at the plan for his design. Thanks for all the great info on your Blog, i have thouroughly enjoyed reading about many of your explorations.

Cheers,

Courtlyn Puerto Montt Chile

Lars Marius Garshol - 2017-05-06 09:27:56

I'm afraid I don't have his contact details. Usually I take care to note address and phone number, but for some reason I failed to this time. I don't know why. However, I did a search now, and I'm pretty sure it's this guy: https://personer.eniro.se/p/staffan+larsson/1731074

Courtlyn. - 2017-05-12 17:34:20

Thanks Lars. Really loving your blog. Keep it up! We brew 250 liter batches here in southern Chile and on account of propane prices boil the hops in a separate container. The min batch is usually only boiled for 5 to 10 minutes so i guess it's not really raw ale. Do you know how the kviek was cultured years and years ago? Something like catching sour dough bread yeaat? What i find interesting is many of the kveik strains mentioned on the blog most of them are not sour. Anyway thanks again. Bestregards from apatagonia,
Courtlyn